I can agree with that.

I've seen it delete files, several times. In one occurrence it changed a user's filenames to be numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, etc... in place of the proper names, then corrupted them. That was ~12 months ago, he disabled OneDrive because it was causing really weird behaviour and messing with Office 365 online, which is what caused that number issue. I have four VM on this computer that all had the delete issue happen, not sure why, but within the last year I've seen each of my Windows VMs delete the files when disabling OneDrive.

OneDrive has been around longer, sure, but Microsoft noticed they can use it to collect more data. They knew people already used it, so why not force it, and then no one will question why.

What problem does OneDrive actually solve?

The only reason Microsoft wants to force OneDrive to be active, really boils down to them needing more content for AI. If the goal was just safe remote storage, the language, service, and support would be clear, clean, and easy to navigate, which it's not. Then you have the issue where OneDrive can turn itself on, why? If you turned it off, there is no, absolutely no, condition where it makes sense for it to self-enable, for the sake of the user. If OneDrive was for the user, and for some kind of remote storage / backup / document safety, it would be Opt-In, disabled by default, and a secondary storage system. It certainly wouldn't vacuum up files, and turn folders into cloud storage drives, without consent. It wouldn't delete your files when you turn it back off, and it wouldn't get in the way and make you want to punch your screen constantly.

It is clearly an AI vacuum, they need more data, you have data, they'll take it without meaningful consent. Meaningful consent, not a footnote under 100 pages of legal nonsense. Meaningful consent, where any legal terms, are short, relevant, and clear, so they know you can't be confused as an average user. Oddly enough, that is the opposite of any Microsoft terms and conditions.

Well, do you honestly think the “classics” are worth reading? I don't enjoy reading, I rarely do it for enjoyment. Thinking back to all the terrible books we read through primary / secondary school, there is not a single book that I can remember which I would recommend, that was a forced reading assignment. I'm not trolling anyone, I honestly believe, all the books I listed were terrible. The last book I read and enjoyed was: “The path of Freemasonry, The craft as a spiritual practice”.

I have two daughters, one in primary and one in secondary school, they enjoy reading, but will also tell you the forced reading assignments aren't good. Here's the worst part, they can't really read what they want, they couldn't Amazon a book and read it, it has to be selected from the library, but the library doesn't have a great selection.

My younger daughter is currently into the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so I bought her the “FSM Bible”. She brought it to school, and was told she could not use it for her book report, why? She was forced to go to the library and select a book, didn't find anything she wanted, and was told it wasn't optional, again, why? I'd buy her any book she wanted, I don't mind if she wants to read Anne Rice, her choice, but the school is preventing her from reading, and then we head about falling literary rates. My older daughter has the same problem in high school, she has to select from a very limited selection, and can't read what she wants.

The school pushes the “classics”, why? They're not worth reading, they're boring, so if “The Great Gatsby” is so wonderful that it has to be studied, why not study Anne Rice and her books about Sexual Servitude in BDSM settings? However, that's my opinion, can you please give me reasons why the “classics” should be studied, what they offer, and what they teach?

Maybe the real issue is that the majority of books aren't engaging. The attention span isn't an issue, if the book was engaging, it would grab your attention and keep it.

Standardized Tests, never really tested anything, I remember taking them and they were terribly written. I remember in grade 10 when we took the “Literacy Test” (Ontario, Canada), you had to read short passages, and answer questions. The problem, you couldn't give objective answers, they had to be subjective, and the right subjective answer. A fair number of teenagers failed because they provided an answer the marker didn't agree with. I never understood the point of those tests, they never tested anything worth collecting as a metric you could reliably use.

Common Core, I don't know, I've given my opinion of the various forms of it, many times. I'm not sure what they teach for literacy, but I know there is a concept where you don't sound out the word, you use pictures to guess. That might not be part of common core, to be fair.

The other issue, why bother investing 300 pages of time into a book, when you could give me the summary in a page? The classics are the worst of all, “The Great Gatsby”, what actually happens in that book that is worth the investment of time? Where the Red Fern Grows, Crab, The Kay, David, The Hatched, The Pearl, and so on. They're boring and dry books, with weak plots that really make you want to give up before starting. For years, kids are beaten down with literature homework, and forced to read what I would call terrible books. They're not exciting, they're not engaging, and they're not interesting, so what did you think the outcome was going to be?

I have two teenagers, and we had to teach them how to read an analog clock. Some of their friends can't, and it's absolutely pathetic. My favourite clock was the ThinkGeek one that told time in Hex, Octal, Base 3, Binary and Klingon :). Granted, it wasn't analog, but you quickly realize people can't read in different bases.

This is definitely an area that parents should be teaching kids, you have failed at being a parent if your kids can't an analog clock, at least in 2025. Just so I'm clear, a base 10 clock, I don't care if your kid can tell time in Octal, Binary or Hex, although cool, but base 10 is a minimum.

I didn't know about that, I knew they removed the “Reply To” header from being visible, I don't know if they put it back, hopefully they did.

All Microsoft Tools are fragmented, without argument, and they all have complex, stupid, broken, user setups that can drive administrators insane. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Intune, Office, etc... they all have a different portal, that is completely disconnected from the others, in both functionality and design. Even something simple, like allowing a user to reset their password, is broken, objectively broken, even if configured “correctly” some users can, some users can't.

I don't need to talk about Windows, and I'm not going to because regardless of what tool you pick from Microsoft, it does not work with the others, in any concept of smooth, reasonable, interoperation. Name two tools that reasonably work together in a synergy, where they leverage each other to create a better overall experience.

How can you justify the extra time and money spent to management for what is basically a moving target?

It's not a moving target, I develop and maintain numerous tools / applications, that work across Windows, Mac, Linux, and a bunch of Unixes. They all have Wayland / X GUI's, with the right fallbacks, and on the Linux side, work across Arch, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Rock, etc...

Maybe a small developer could create a reasonable excuse with a lack of manpower, and that might work. Microsoft? Microsoft, and other large companies, have absolutely no excuse. Microsoft's motivates are clear, they know their OS is terrible, and they need to force people to use it, which is why they won't release working versions of their tools for real / production ready operating systems.

There are four main issues, the fragmentation, politicalization, software support and OEM support.

OEM support might be the biggest overall factor, if companies like Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others shipped Linux by default, within a decade you'd have mass market penetration on the desktop.

The second major issue, software support, companies just refuse to make Linux/Unix variants of their programs. Microsoft is a great example, where they either ignore Linux/Unix, or, make the Linux/Unix variant so feature lacking / annoying to work with, you give up. They won't offer support, and they make sure to handicap the software to assure you'll be annoyed and angered, so you give up and go to Windows. This is intentional, not accidental, and they have to keep handicapping Linux/Unix because they have to force people to use Windows, not invite, not suggest, not have a better product, force.

Politicalization, take the politics out of it. I don't care if you're far-right, far-left, LGBT, Trans, a feminist, I don't care. So many products are hard aligned that anyone looking in is just seeing bigotry and hate on overdrive. We have projects, major projects, where the leaders are allowing terms like Nazi to be thrown around! If I have to evaluate software, and upon looking up your tool see Nazi, Nazi, Nazi, Fascist, TRANS PRIDE, Butt Plug, LGBT, Minor Attraction, Child Porn lover, what do you want me to do? With that level of unprofessionalism, it's handicapping Linux penetration because do you want to use a tool whose leaders / user base are irrational far-left, hate fuelled special people?

Finally, fragmentation, why does every single f'ing package have 10 variants? Snap, Flat, App, Native, Electron, all pegged at different version, all showing up in the mess of software stores, and all lacking documentation?

Fix these, and I think you could bring people over.

I don't think there's a lot to talk about, I can respect your views, and I'll admit I don't write Rust, I've never written any Rust. I mainly write in GO (which has annoying guard rails of it own), TypeScript, C, and a few other minor languages to round out my common use toolbox.

This happened within the last 20-minutes, a Jr Dev was showing me something they wrote that was “optimization”, “performant” and “safe”. It was slow, glitchy, and unusable, why? TypeScript / JavaScript memory handling. I showed her exactly why it was happening, and how to fix it, and the fix was really to set a bunch of variable to null, and use deep cloning in another area to make sure the memory was cleaned up enough the GC could do its job.

Have a rocking holiday season. :)

Fine, let's use your exact quote, it won't change anything.

Let's break it down into two parts:

Yes, they can, but you can't say they're useless because people can drive without them. The problem is, when people suggest languages are memory safe, they fall back on claiming that “memory safety” is a catch-all. What they're outright stating is they lack the skill, knowledge and ability to do a job, and think that incompetence is a defence because of a “safety” feature for something they don't know how to do. It's the same as saying: “My car has seat belts, therefore my car can't get in an accident.”, which again is the statement I made. If you know how to work with memory, you'll never brag and evangelize the “memory safety”. If you know how to drive, you'll never evangelize the seat belt, even if you wear it.

Now this part is just objectively wrong. Anyone claiming the "memory safety" is some incredible safety net that has trivialized program design, removing the actual design portion, is wrong. You can see Rust fans doing this, again, follow Lunduke, he shows people doing this. He showed a tweet where someone claimed that once a Rust program or library is developed it is bug free, and complete by the sheer glory of Rust.

If you summarzie this, you get to the point I made, where Rust fans seem to have this belief that simply wearing a seat belt prevents an accident, when it doesn't, can't, and the real issue is they're just clueless idiots when they act like that. You don't need me to show you this, again, Lunduke, he covers it, alot, and it's objectively true.

The reason I'm pushing back against that label, it's used by people as a catch-all. The number of Jr Engineers, or Jr Developers, who I've heard use “memory safe” as an excuse, is ridiculous. If you don't know how to work with memory, and you think the compiler is going to save you from writing good code, you're not a good developer / engineer.

The idea is cute, but it's never once panned out from my experience, if you don't know how to work with memory, learn? Now, for the people who aren't pushing Rust as the new saviour of programming, that's fine, but it's the hardline idiots I'm pushing back on. Just learn how to program, and you'll be fine.

If you really want to try being “memory safe”, grab C, and write a library management system for memory, and have fun.

Nope, but I don't make the claim that they exist. To be fair, some might, I don't know, but to me it's absolute statement.

I wouldn't call any of those language memory safe because they're objectively not memory safe.